Noel Gallagher on why his favourite Pink Floyd album is “the pothead’s album”
Throughout Noel Gallagher’s teenage years, he was in a cloud of green smoke, and Pink Floyd was the soundtrack to that wonderfully pungent time in his life. Back then, Gallagher had no serious worries in the world, and Pink Floyd reminds him of those carefree days.
Gallagher grew up in Burnage in Greater Manchester, and as a teenager, he was troublesome. School was of no interest to him, and he’d rather spend his time playing truant rather than in education. When he was 14, he received six months of probation for robbing a corner shop which inadvertently turned out to be the best thing to happen to him.
During those six months, Gallagher used his time wisely and took up the guitar with aspirations of being the next Johnny Marr. After leaving school, he found himself working a series of manual labour jobs that he despised, and he’d more often than not be at home rather than on a building site.
From the outside, Gallagher looked like a waster who wasn’t contributing anything to the world. However, without this hinterland period of his life, Oasis would never have come to fruition. His daily routine would see him venture to a friend’s house before spending the day smoking weed while listening to The Wall by Pink Floyd, and he wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
“When I left school, The Wall was the pothead’s album. Dark Side Of The Moon and Wish You Were Here I maybe overplayed but The Wall I could never get tired of,” Gallagher explained to The Quietus. “That track ‘Nobody Home’ just brings back so many memories for me. After leaving school, I just used to go round my mates house, skin up, and we’d listen to this. Happy, carefree days.”
Gallagher continued: “I met Dave Gilmour once at an industry thing and I think I pissed him off. I said to him, ‘Dave, I think The Wall is your best album but my wife won’t have it, she prefers listening to Meddle.’ And he said, ‘Well, clearly your wife has impeccable taste where you have little. I suggest you listen to her.’ I was like, ‘What the fuck are you talking about? She hasn’t got a clue! Get out of it'”.
Gallagher also spoke about the album during his appearance on the BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs. After naming ‘Nobody Home’ as one of the eight tracks he’d take with him if he was stranded on a desert island, he said: “I know every single word and I can sing it in sequence at the drop of a hat. Roger Waters, for me… I’d love to meet him. His songwriting is so simple yet the story is so grandiose and the whole thing is so epic—I wish I could write an album like that y’know. A concept album. I think I’d have to get extremely pretentious first but this track, called ‘Nobody Home’, it bends my head.”
Although Gallagher is yet to make a concept album, he’s proudly getting more artistically pretentious with age, and perhaps, it’ll be his next step. Listen to his favourite track from The Wall below.
